(OT) N. Korean Nuclear Test

I wouldn't put it past the North Koreans to do just that -- they seem to thrive on shaking the West down for payoffs by brinkmanship. But I don't know if you can actually _get_ 100 kilotons of TNT to go off all at the same time; it may not be possible to get a seismic signature that matches an A-bomb with TNT even if the correct amount of energy is released.

I do know that when the (real) revolution comes to N. Korea they're going to rip their elite into itty bitty pieces.

Hello Michael,

It can take weeks before enough radiation has leaked out of the ground after an underground test.

It would not surprise me one bit if they tried that kind of bluff.

I heard that it's not possible with chemical explosives to make all detonate simultaneously. However how demolition companies do their work could provide a clue as to how to accomplish the "impossible". If fuses are delayed such that the fire reach the TNT in parallell it might be possible.

I don't think that's likely to happen without external influence.

and 5 kT (Russian estimate).

Michael

Hi all,

last night i heared a geophysikan featuring this theory because he registred more a "bffft" than a "bang" and the power of the detonation was at the lower end of possible detonation from nuclear processes.

We will see... some day. The biggest nuclear risk I see, is the missing plutonium in a dirty bomb or smuggled in a airconditioning system in special selected buildings...

Marte

Maybe not. Those people might be more brainwashed than a religious cult.

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I thought that the Pentagon was wanting to do exactly that with a dirty bomb in Utah made from conventional explosives (aeroplane fuel and fertilizer?) that was big enough to simulate a nuclear explosion.

The ones who make it across the border to S Korea wise up pretty quick.

snipped-for-privacy@spamnuke.ludd.luthdelete.se.invalid wrote in news:452bcbe5$0$486$ snipped-for-privacy@news.luth.se:

What I've seen reported for the NK "nuke" test is .55KT,or about 500 tons. That's achievable.

That is exactly how a plutonium fission device works;there's a spherical segmented conventional explosive surrounding the spherical "pit" of PU,and the charges are detonated simultaneously,otherwise you get uneven compression of the pit,and a fizzle.It takes some careful design,equal length wiring,and special components(krytrons)to get all the charges to detonate at the same time.That may be where NK screwed up and only achieved .55KT.(~500 tons)

I don't see why they shouldn't - there aren't very many countries left that _don't_ have nukes.

I think they should be allowed to have them, as long as they promise to only use them as a deterrent, just like ours are supposed to be.

Iran, too.

After all, they only want to be able to defend themselves when the next lunatic president decides to go on another crusade.

And what kind of supreme arrogance does one need to have to presume to have the right to dictate the behavior of other countries?

"Might" does NOT make "right". Just having the power to kick someone's ass doesn't confer any kind of right to actually do so. In fact, it's the threat of being attacked by the US that's prompted them to work on their defense program!

Thanks, Rich

True. Its the other ones (the ones still there) that we are expecting to rise up and overthrow their beloved leader.

From what I understand from listening to an American who spent 40 years there - they are required to learn something like the Catechism Catholics use to indoctrinate children, only it is much larger and must be memorized verbatim. (come to think of it, Catholics do that too)

To hear him tell it the people there believe the Sun doesn't rise except for Kim Jong-il.

shamelessly copied from the BBC site

Kim Jong-il was born in Siberia in 1941 during his father's period of exile in the former Soviet Union.

But official North Korean accounts say he was born in a log cabin at his father's guerrilla base on the country's highest mountain - an event marked by a double rainbow and a new star in the sky.

AND

Radio and TV sets in North Korea are pre-tuned to government stations that pump out a steady stream of propaganda. The state has been dubbed the world's worst violator of press freedom by the media rights body Reporters Without Frontiers.

Press outlets and broadcasters - all of them under direct state control - serve up a menu of flattering reports about Kim Jong-il and his daily agenda. North Korea's economic hardships or famines are not reported.

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Well, they may be North Koreans, but they're still Koreans. I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see them really build one. Just because they're communist doesn't necessarily make them ignoramuses.

Thanks, Rich

Hello Rich,

Sure, but such countries often lack a lot of infrastructure that we take for granted. After the iron curtain fell in Europe I remember a long conversation with an engineer who used to hold a high-level scientific position there. He said that even in the 80's they had to make do without a calculator because there just weren't any. Time slots on the mainframe were hard to come by and the thought of finding a PC wouldn't even have crossed their minds.

When I presented my final project for the masters degree (a CCD camera) at SPIE I mentioned in passing how I did the VME interface for it. It wasn't important to me, it was simply needed so I designed one. Then some people came down from the auditorium. One of them wanted to know how I could possibly run an 8bit ADC chip at 20MHz, a question that surprised me. I said that I just ordered a few of those and you could almost see tears welling up in his eyes. Turned out that he was a scientist from East Germany which at that time was still behind the iron curtain. These guys had nothing. The good stuff could only be purchased with cold hard western cash which they also did not have.

In principle, I agree with you.

I also think that countries like Iran who use terrorist tactics to confront bullies, probably wouldn't mind upping the ante a bit

Iran is, after all being led spiritually by an Ayatollah that has no problem with issuing a Fatwa declaring it OK and necessary to assassinate someone who he says blasphemed in another country.

All it takes is one religious figure in power who thinks he needs to fulfill a prophesy he read in the Koran, or Bible, or in a dream, or got tired of all the posturing and said "what the hell," and pressed the button.

Not that the US is setting some kind of stellar example with a jackass like George (I take my orders from God) Bush . . .

Nukes, they aren't just for deterrence anymore.

The fact of the matter - humans were never meant to overpopulate the planet. Our culture (morals, way of thinking, drives, etc) is only suited to small tribes not civilizations.

Wipe out 90% of us and the remaining 10 may be able to figure it out.

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I heard that they are told that it's worse everywhere else in the world. We should all send really fat diplomats to N. Korea to put the lie to that.

It would be a better test for a country with a limited amount of raw material on hand. a 0.5KT device will give them one good data point on a graph.

Worse yet, if it was a small weapon, rather than a small test device, they might be working on something small enough to ship in a small container. Easier to export to a client nation or sneak in to a target.

The idea some have put forth that their test was a fizzle doesn't make sense. If we assume that half of the released energy was from the high explosive trigger, we'd have to ask what sort of weapon were they testing that has a 250 ton TNT equivalent trigger.

IIRC, the state of the art weapon requires something on the order of a few hundred pounds of HE for a trigger.

The Wal*Mart scenario.

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Any country led by someone who claims their authority comes from some deity _deserves_ to be laughed at. That's why I laugh when all the Muslims get angry when a cartoonist lampoons them. They remind me of bullies; they can dish it out, but they can;t take it.

As to diocy in office;

Surprising as it may be to some, I enjoyed my 20+ years in the US, particularly because the constitution nominally prevents such stupidity as claiming the country is beholden to some 'God'. (As it happens, the Treaty of Tripoli states 'the United States is not in any way founded on the Christian religion' and was voted thereof by the Senate - perhaps Dubya hasn't read his History)

It does not deny anyone's religion, but wisely sidesteps the question such that the government (when they follow it) is agnostic (pun intended) on the subject. Dubya is an Idiot of gargantuan proportions (a view shared by many of my friends in the USA) who makes more enemies daily by invoking 'his' 'God'. It would be laughable if he didn't have the keys to the largest arsenal on earth. One hopes for some reality in the White House (I will note that 10, Downing Street needs the same lobotomy).

Cheers

PeteS

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@hovnanian.com:

Sorry,I meant that faking a nuke explosion with 500 tons of TNT or other explosive is achieveable.Spysats do not have 24/7 coverage,and known,predictable orbits.

I've read that most nations first nuke-dets were ~10-60 KT. It would be very odd that NK decided to test a "micro-nuke" that requires far more sophistication than a simpler,more "fissionable-wasteful" bomb that has a much greater chance of success.Embarassing to the leadership,and potentially fatal to the NK nuclear personnel,to have a failed test.

That much? I'd guess not more than 50 lb.of explosive.(that's a lot) After all,you are only crushing a pit the size of grapefruit;it would not take a "few hundred lbs" to do that size item. I suspect most of the weight of a nuke comes from the structure needed to hold it together thru launch,flight and reentry.

Yes,but they may have had a partial nuclear "detonation";the "fizzle". If some of the charges went off and crushed the pit in a distorted manner,then that,IMO,is possible.A nuclear reaction was begun,but not all of the PU was able to be fissioned,so there was a lesser release of energy.(but greater than the non-nuke trigger.)